


The President of KoR Technology

by ElegyGoldsmith



Series: Breaking Rey [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Dark, Dom/sub, Dominant Kylo Ren, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Fifty Shades of Reylo, Jealousy, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Obsession, Power Imbalance, Reylo Week, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Rey/Kylo Ren, Smut, Stalking, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 13:57:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15686805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElegyGoldsmith/pseuds/ElegyGoldsmith
Summary: The light carves out two figures, and Finn’s dark eyes widen as he recognizes Poe. His companion is a stranger even to Kylo, just some anonymous street runner Phasma dispatched through her network of connections. He isn’t anyone Poe would’ve been able to trace back to Kylo — not that the overeager man even tried, by the look of things.“Anything to say?”Finn’s transfixed by the crisp illusion, his gaze riveted to the washed-out simulacrum of Poe accepting the jump drive from the hooded street runner. Kylo taps his watch again and the illusion slows, zooming in to reveal the drive so there’s no mistaking.Yet the prisoner only glances at the device before he looks back to the OSF recruiter’s face. Interesting. Intel extrapolated it was his attachment to the Skywalkers that drew Finn to their sham of a foundation, but this is somehow … personal.Adaptation is the key to control, and Kylo is more than happy to adapt.





	The President of KoR Technology

**Author's Note:**

> A few days later than planned - but here it is! A couple of things:
> 
> 1\. Fair warning/intellectual TW: since this is a dark/light-swapped universe, bad is good, and good is bad. So I might as well have titled this bit "With Apologies to Princess Leia," because this world's Leia is ... uh ... different. So strap in, lovelies!
> 
> 2\. This is going to be the last freestanding installment of these stories from Kylo's perspective, as all new bits are going to be wrapped up in a companion story I'm calling BREAKING REY <3 So these first three sections ( _Midnight Special at Takodana_ , _pRey_ , and this very piece) are essentially the prequel to _Craving Kylo_ /the first few chapters of _Breaking Rey_ , which I'll alternate between moving forward!
> 
> Thoughts? Opinions? Sound off in the comments, I try to get back to everyone! 
> 
> (also, spoiler alert: You are awesome! Hope you enjoy!)

Everything Kylo wants is behind this door.

Not Rey herself — that’d be too much to hope for just yet. But the means to her. A way to bring her here to him, tonight.

If he’s careful.

His omnipresent gloves are a shield for him, a bastion against the world’s horrors, but he isn’t wearing them now. He splays his bare fingertips on the cool metal door as though he can soak up the other man’s fear, siphoning it between the door’s molecules. He’s watched through the security cams’ digital eyes as Finn put on a brave face; leaving him to cool his heels has proved telling.

Sixty minutes. More than a thousand breaths, each of them spent wondering. Even for a brave man, a young and foolhardy man flush with righteous trespass, it’s been long enough for panic to start to creep in. Has he been forgotten, abandoned? Finn must know he could have far worse ahead than illegal detainment if no one returns to free him. The bars are sturdier than his bones; they’ll hold him here a thousand years, if need be. Until this whole city crumbles to dust.

The near-darkness is a particularly satisfying stroke. Bright enough for its prisoner to make out the dim outlines of the room but shroud everything of consequence. For everything Finn has, his closeness with Rey and his indifference to everything she could become, Kylo finds it fitting.

“I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony,” he mutters to himself, savoring the chill sensation as he thinks of what lies beyond the door. Human eyes weren’t mean for half-light, but this is Kylo’s home, the twilight world between waking and sleeping. His own obsidian gaze will pierce it easily, a hunter at home amid the gloom.

Finn was distracted by Poe’s talk of the OSF that night at Takodana. He’s hotheaded, the kind of outsider that’s so easy for silvertongued Poe to snare, and his reactionary nature will beget to predictable outcomes. He’ll do the opposite of anything Kylo demands, at least at first — not out of self-interest, but as a show of how little control Kylo has over him. That will be his undoing.

Finn must believe to his very core that the idea to call Rey for help is his own, and that he has no other option. She  _ must _ come to Kylo freely. That much is critical.

He draws himself upright and reluctantly withdraws his hand from the door, restoring his gloves to their rightful place. They’re his second skin, yet another layer of protection against the OSF’s myriad ways.

The OSF … his family.

No — not for a long time now. That word is hollow. Leather whispers of hatred as his fingers bundle themselves into fists. Tonight it’s the  _ fear _ of the Skywalkers he’s counting on most, the suspicion that Finn would do damn near anything to stay in their good graces. That’s their true power: their ability to make other twist themselves into knots while they stand unbowed, untouched, their white robes eternally unsullied.

Leia. Han. Luke. Ancient gargoyles that still loom over his life all these years later.

He shoves the thoughts of them into the tartaric pit in the back of his mind, straightens his jacket, and waves the door open.

Finn scuffles to his feet at the sudden intrusion. He’s been sitting on the floor cross-legged, and he struggles to his feet awkwardly, limbs dulled from so much waiting. “ _ Hey! _ Keeping me here is illegal — I know my rights!”

The younger man’s tongue has only been sharpened by the delay, but he falls silent again as he recognizes Kylo. Presumably he expected to see Phasma again, but his surprise only lasts a few moments before the surly scowl overtakes his features again.

It takes an undue amount of effort for Kylo to not roll his eyes at the other man’s juvenile antics. “The police have bigger priorities than a thief who’s already been caught. They’ll be here as soon as they can spare the resources. Until that time, you’ll remain my guest.”

It’s only half-true, of course. Kylo takes great pains to stay on the good side of the authorities, and a single phone call — routed through the appropriate channels, of course — was all it took to ensure this delay. No doubt the chief is secretly hoping Kylo will manage to resolve the matter himself, leaving only another six hundred or so calls for the department to manage by day’s end.

Finn grabs the bars separating them, his palms slapping dully against the solid metal. “ _ This  _ is how you treat your guests?”

“Those who enter my house uninvited and try to steal from me?” Kylo snaps, letting a self-righteous edge creep into his voice. “ _ Yes _ .”

Finn’s expression becomes even stormier as he sets his jaw, shadows dripping from his knitted brow like ink.

“You didn’t take any of my valuables, but went straight for my private terminal. And corporate espionage is something I take very seriously.”

The younger man’s glower pierces the gloom like a dagger. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Fine, I’ll do the talking.” Kylo permits himself to pace a bit, just a few slow steps to and fro, enough to remind Finn of his own claustrophobic quarters. “I know what you broke in to take, and I know who convinced you do to it.”

The caged man inhales sharply, no doubt readying an acerbic salvo, but Kylo taps his sleek watch and a blinding will-o’-the-wisp bursts to light a few inches above his bent wrist. The holoprojection is a cheap theatric, years in the past for KoR Technology already, but whatever Finn’s going to say dies on his lips as he squints into the blue-white nexus.

The light carves out two figures, and Finn’s dark eyes widen as he recognizes Poe. His companion is a stranger even to Kylo, just some anonymous street runner Phasma dispatched through her network of connections. He isn’t anyone Poe would’ve been able to trace back to Kylo — not that the overeager man even tried, by the look of things.

“Anything to say?”

Finn’s transfixed by the crisp illusion, his gaze riveted to the washed-out simulacrum of Poe accepting the jump drive from the hooded street runner. Kylo taps his watch again and the illusion slows, zooming in to reveal the drive so there’s no mistaking.

Yet the prisoner only glances at the device before he looks back to the OSF recruiter’s face. Interesting. Intel extrapolated it was his attachment to the Skywalkers that drew Finn to their sham of a foundation, but this is somehow … personal.

Adaptation is the key to control, and Kylo is more than happy to adapt.

“What confuses me is why he didn’t simply take the drive straight to Leia.” Her name tastes like ashes; he’s breaking an old vow to himself even saying it, but the president of KoR Technology fears nothing — the name of his enemy least of all.

“Poe doesn’t have direct access to Leia.” Finn’s distracted, perhaps realizing only too late that he’s spoken the words aloud. His scowl deepens more than enough to make up for it.

“Everyone knows how close they are,” Kylo offers. It’s a lie, of course; the information he has on the woman who birthed him cost him dearly, but it was worth every penny. He narrows his eyes, feigning surprise at Finn’s baffled expression. “Or perhaps not.”

“You’re just trying to mess with me.”

“You’re no one to me, Finn.” Kylo pitches his voice carefully, dismissive enough to sound uncaring, warm enough that a stranger might actually mistake him for someone with a heart. It’s a strange mien for him to assume, like wearing a shoe that doesn’t quite fit. “But you at least deserve to see the truth.”

Kylo swipes his free hand through the holoprojection and it swirls into momentary nothingness, blue-white lights coalescing again into the next queued vid.

Finn’s pained gasp makes goosebumps race up the back of Kylo’s neck. Even in the dungeon’s dim light he can see the younger man drowning, sinking deeper within himself as they silently watch Poe fucking the old woman, his pert young ass clenching with each thrust.

Of course Poe didn’t come to take the decryption key himself; he’s more careful than that. He might be Leia’s little lapdog, her sub of the moment, but he’s thirsty. Even the dull reports Phasma’s team submits once a week make it clear Poe wants to advance in the OSF, not just the old woman’s bed. He isn’t a true submissive, of course; he’s just playing the role and hoping for the best.

“I’d say your friend Poe has all the access to Leia that he needs,” Kylo observes dryly.

Finn tears his gaze from the holoprojection to glare at Kylo, but his anger is like flash paper, stolen by shock almost before it ignites. “But… He…” His close-cropped hair shimmers in the gloom as he hangs his head. “I don’t understand.”

Something unpleasant twangs through Kylo’s gut — surely not  _ regret _ , not when he’s so close. Not when he has Finn right where he wants him: vulnerable and shaken, distracted by inner agony. “He used you. He sent you here rather than risk his own neck.”

Inadvertently or otherwise, Poe has made this altogether too easy, Kylo muses as he watches Finn crumble from within. He should send the OSF’s prize recruiter an anonymous gift to thank him. A floral arrangement, perhaps. Or maybe an extra-large box of condoms; god knows that he’s bound to need them given Leia’s voracious appetites.

The word escapes Finn’s lips like a dying breath: “Why?”

Kylo taps his watch, banishing the holoprojection and plunging the dungeon back into darkness. “He’s assumed none of the risk for your failure, and would’ve taken all the credit had you succeeded.”

“I don’t believe you. This is just some stupid trick.”

“I assure you it isn’t. And even if it was, you’d be in the exact same position you are right now.” Kylo pauses, letting the enormity of Finn’s situation hit home again. He has to play this turn just right — but the affected regret stings his tongue like iron. “I’m sorry he put you in this position.”

“You could just let me go,” Finn offers, his dry tone doing nothing to mask his turmoil.

“And have you tell the Organa-Solo Foundation everything you know as soon as you’re free? Surely you don’t think me that stupid.”

“Then I guess we have nothing to say to each other.”

Kylo grits his jaw as the younger man sags back from the bars, leaning as far away as he can amid the cell’s meager embrace. Count on a moral absolutist to completely overlook the option of negotiating.

“Your trespass here notwithstanding, perhaps we can come to a mutually agreeable understanding,” Kylo hints through his begrudging disguise. “If you were able to offer something significant in return, I might be prevailed upon to let you depart under your own auspices.”

Finn’s distrust slices the air like a dagger. “Why would you do that?”

“I’d rather not get caught up in a lovers’ spat.”  _ That _ hits Finn in the achilles heel, but Kylo speaks quickly, raising his voice just enough that the younger man can only gape. “Do you have a lawyer?”

Finn shakes his head.

“A friend, then. Anyone who can speak on your behalf and secure whatever collateral we agree upon.”

“The OSF—”

“—will have no part in this,” Kylo interrupts, venom creeping into his words before he takes a calming breath. He needs to be amenable, not adversarial. “If I’m letting you go free without consequences, Finn, there must at least be conditions. I have to protect myself and everyone who works for me. You might think me a monster, but I look after my own.” He affects a heavy sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose, giving the best impression of being at his wits’ end that he can muster up. “Isn’t there anyone you can trust — a civilian, for lack of a better phrase?”

He waits on the edge of a knife, eternal moments stretching away as Finn thinks in silence. This is it, the moment when all his careful planning will either secure the thing he prizes most or banish his hopes to ruin.

“There’s… I have … a friend,” Finn mumbles at long last. “My roommate.”

Words could shatter this perfect moment, so Kylo simply draws his cell phone out of his pocket and hands it to Finn.

The door suddenly snaps shut behind him, but Kylo has no memory of walking out of the dungeon. Suddenly he’s the one who’s drowning, his ribs unrelenting as iron, choking every indrawn breath. He screws the earwig into place, fingers fumbling with the delicate device. It’s unseemly for him to be this agitated — Snoke would’ve purged him of this feeling at once, had he still been serving the old man — but there’s still one piece left to be decided, one player who has yet to truly enter Kylo’s game.

Rey could refuse to come. It’s unthinkable, but he has to at least consider that possibility, as much as it sickens him.

The phone is already ringing by the time he gets his earwig online, each low trill like an electric shock mainlined into his heart. The telltale click as the call rolls to voicemail is a panacea, and relief spills outward through Kylo’s chest as he listens to Finn’s rushed, nearly inarticulate message. It’s a disappointment not to hear her bell-clear voice again, but that brief connection could’ve been an opportunity to refuse. Now the decision is hers alone.

He waits a suitable amount of time before reentering the dungeon, and he sneaks a peek at the call history as Finn surrender the device to him. Finn’s wiped Rey’s number from the device’s history, of course — and he grits back a smile as he replaces the phone in his pocket. As though that could somehow stop him. “And?”

“She’ll be here.”

Kylo nods, taking the lie at face value. “And who should I be expecting?”

Finn’s anger seethes beneath the surface of his skin; it won’t be long before he’s all loathing and brimstone again, those visions of Poe haunting him like demons and firing him up. He blames Kylo, surely, middleman that he is, but that doesn’t matter now. All that matters are the three final words he offers up before sinking back against the cell bars in defeat: “Her name’s Rey.”

Kylo nods his understanding, a single, sharp jerk of his head, and hurries out of his own dungeon again before he can betray himself.

* * *

He keeps himself busy in his study while K-2SO monitors reports from surveillance agents nearest the dingy apartment. Wherever Rey is, she’s not checking her messages.

An hour passes, and the silence calms him. No news is good news.

Night falls over his shoulder, and Kylo hears the mecha greyhound coming before he sees him. “She’s coming.”

“Estimated time of arrival?”

The featureless metal creature noses into the study and pads toward the fireplace. He settles himself before it like a proper dog, turning a few circles for effect before dropping to the floor with a sigh. “Approximately thirty-six minutes.”

Excellent. That’s plenty of time to prepare.

Kylo’s legs ache with reproach as he stands, and something catches his eye as he stretches. One of the robots has set a bell jar before the window, and a red rose glares at him with crimson fury from beneath its crystalline cage. This room is homier than most of his others, and therefore less to Kylo’s taste — but this is an altogether strange touch, even for intelligences programmed to anticipate his whims. “Did you put that there, Kaytoo?”

“It seemed a nice touch. Might make her more open to suggestion,” the huge dog mutters, his syllables slurring in an approximation of sleepiness.

Kylo can’t shake the feeling that the robot knows more than it’s letting on. That’s the danger of designing a program to be adaptive: he’s never entirely sure what’ll come out.

“I’m sure you’ll get whatever it is that you need from her, Master Kylo,” K-2SO adds drowsily. “Just be sure you understand what it is she needs from  _ you _ . More than just her best friend’s freedom, of course.” The robotic hound yawns. “I’ll be sure to make myself scarce when she arrives.”

As will I, Kylo thinks as he opens the passageway behind the bookcase. He knows the way by heart, even in pitch darkness, but for some reason he turns back just before the hidden door closes. The rose gleams bloodred in the moonlight, and his heart skips strangely as he truly realizes that after so many weeks of waiting, finally,  _ finally _ , Rey is on her way to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, that devious Kylo Ren, whatever is he going to get up to next?
> 
> We're gonna find out in another new [Craving Kylo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951468/chapters/34645847) installment, coming soon to a smut device near you - and you're not gonna believe what Kylo brings home for Rey to wear! (hint: it's not clothing, and not exactly jewelry, but it **is** metal... ^-^)
> 
> THANKS FOR READING!!!!
> 
> <3


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